


the robb'd that smiles (steals something from the thief)

by Damkianna



Category: Dark Matter (TV)
Genre: Affectionate Insults, Gen, Heist, Kidnapping, Post-Season/Series 02, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 17:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8926075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: Five doesn't tell the rest of them she's planning to hack into Derrick Moss's personal files until after she's already done it. Cue shenanigans: the crew goes undercover, Five enjoys her part a little too much, and Three gets shot. Again.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mlraven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mlraven/gifts).



> I saw your request for Five & Three gen, mlraven, and specifically the undercover prompt, and just couldn't resist! Five's not _quite_ a princess, but I got her as close as I could. :D Hope you enjoy, and happy Yuletide! ♥
> 
> Title adopted from a line in Othello. Apologies to modern art fans; Three's just a philistine. ;D

 

 

Five doesn't tell the rest of them she's planning to hack into Derrick Moss's personal files until after she's already done it.

Which may actually have been the best strategy, considering the flat look Two gets on her face when Five does tell them.

"I was _really careful_ ," Five emphasizes.

Two seems unmoved.

But the kid's not stupid—she wouldn't be bringing it up out of the blue, knowing Two might not like it, unless she had a reason. So Three cuts her a break and steps in. "And?" he drawls, raising an eyebrow. "What'd you find?"

"Well," Five says, "it looks like One was, um," and then she shifts her weight and looks down, her hands wrapping around each other. "It looks like he was still trying to figure out who'd killed Catherine Moss, before—"

 _Before he went and got his dumb ass murdered_ , she doesn't say, but Three can hear it all right. He tilts his head back, casual, and closes his eyes for a second.

Nothing they could've done about it. That's the part that burns the worst, because it's so close to being a comfort: nothing they could've done about it, locked up like they were. But that means if they hadn't been, it would never have happened; Two would've put that bullet between Jace Corso's eyes a whole hell of a lot sooner, and One would be—would be right here with them, telling them this himself and looking at them all bright-eyed, expecting them to care about it just because he thought they should. Just because he's never learned better than to expect the best of people—

Because he _had_ never. Probably what killed him, Three thinks. Three can almost picture his stupid bewildered face: _why would anybody want to kill me?_ As if there aren't a thousand reasons Three can come up with right off the top of his head, starting with _Because you're rich_ and ending with _Because you're a self-righteous asshole_ —

"Anyway," Five says, clearing her throat, and Three squints his eyes open in time to catch the look she throws at him. "He seemed pretty sure it wasn't actually Three. He was making a list of suspects," and she turns and does something with the screen beside her so it tosses up a document with some names, crosslinked to some images off to the side and a bunch of other files. "People who seemed like they might have had a reason, and with the influence to set things up, frame Three and everything."

"... So?" Three says.

" _So_ , this is also a great list of people who maybe didn't want One poking around in their business," Five says, eyebrows raised. "People who might have been keeping track of what he was up to, to make sure he wasn't onto them—who might have known about the surgery and stuff, and that Jace Corso would be able to walk right into his apartment."

"You think one of them killed One," Six summarizes.

"It seems like a pretty good place to start," Five says. "He'd narrowed things down a lot—people who really had a motive, who've had business rivals 'conveniently disappear' and stuff before. And even if whoever killed Catherine didn't kill One—" She shrugged and gestured to the screen, the web of interlinking data that sprawled away from One's list. "These corporate people all know each other. They're always spying on each other, digging up dirt, stealing files. Even if the first person we track down isn't guilty, they might still have something we can use to figure out who is."

"And I'm guessing you have a suggestion for this 'first person' in mind," Two says, crossing her arms.

"One put this guy at the top of the list for a reason," Five says, and does a couple quick computery things that put one particular face and name up on the screen really big. "Elias Verduro. He actually had more reason to kill Derrick than Catherine—Derrick's company wasn't that big, but it was starting to get there, and eating away at Verduro's market share to do it. One was thinking maybe he'd been trying for Derrick originally, but whoever was doing the hit got Catherine by mistake."

"Sounds like a great guy," Three says. "And wait, don't tell me: you've also figured out how we're going to track him down."

Five looks sheepish—but not, Three thinks, especially apologetic. "Well, the thing is, we don't have to," she says, and pulls up what looks like a list of messages. "Derrick Moss's personal account still had all kinds of stuff in the inbox, along with the archived stuff I actually wanted—I copied all of it. And, uh."

She picks one message out of the list and opens it. It isn't anything specific to Moss, or at least it doesn't look like it to Three; boilerplate, a mass transmission. An invitation.

"Among other things," Five says, "Verduro's got a really big thing for art. He's bought a lot of one-of-a-kind pieces, and—"

"And what's the point of having them," Six murmurs, eyes flicking over the text on the screen, "if you can't rub other people's faces in it?"

"Pretty much," Five says. "As far as I can tell, he had this art gallery constructed in the first place just to fill it with his stuff—or stuff by people who'd bribed him enough—and then hold a party in it."

Three sits forward. "Well! If there's going to be booze, I'm in," he says.

Two, of course, ignores this helpful contribution. "So, what," she says, "we sneak into this gallery opening, find this Verduro guy, and spend an hour interrogating him in the basement?"

"Two's right," Six says, because he's almost as much of a suck-up as One—as One was. "We won't have much of a window. Somebody's bound to notice he's gone before long. And there's no guarantee we'll be able to get anything out of him in that time."

"No," Five agrees, "there wouldn't be. _If_ that were the plan."

"Oh, come off it, kid," Three says, before she can get too smug in the face. "Just tell us your idea already."

"Well," Five says, with a sweet and totally fake smile, "since you asked so nicely," and does.

 

 

*

 

 

And that's how Three ends up in a suit.

Again.

"See, I don't know if you remember the last time I wore one of these things," Three says to Five, tugging on the stupid too-tight cuffs of it, "but I do, and, oh, yeah, _everything went to shit_."

"Yeah, that was because of the exploding central power core," Five says mercilessly, "not the suit. Stop hunching."

Three sighs, forces his shoulders back, and sticks a finger in to scratch underneath the collar of the stupid jacket. "I'm not some tinpot corporate dictator this time," he says, "I'm a bodyguard. Bodyguards hunch."

"Not Jessadrine Mayeur's," Five says primly, and then frowns and slaps at his arm. "Stop scratching."

"Aw, come on," Three mutters, and hunches again as Five glares at him.

She's really got this whole puffed-up heiress thing down. She's wearing a dress they had stuffed away somewhere—maybe a spare outfit Truffault had left behind on the _Raza_ after that whole Eos 7 disaster, or maybe they had it shoved in the vault somewhere; hell, maybe it had been part of Wendy's wardrobe. Three suppresses a shudder.

Anyway, it's kind of—frillier than the corporate outfit Truffault had put her in. More layers, more colors; a little more style, a little less restraint. And same goes for the hair: it's not the low-key trimmed blond this time, but long curls, twisted up somehow by Two so they fall all fancy over Five's shoulder.

And the bratty expression just brings the whole ensemble together.

Five had argued that with a decent cover, she was the best choice to make the approach—Emily Kolburn didn't have anywhere near as many WANTED tags slapped on her file as the rest of them, and some of them were restricted because of her age and all, so they wouldn't pop up the second Verduro put her face through a scan. Which had been enough to convince Two.

But Three's starting to think it's all just an excuse for Five to boss him around.

"Jessadrine Mayeur doesn't hire people who scratch under their collars," Five adds, airy.

"I'm starting to think you're a little too invested in this cover," Three mutters.

 

 

*

 

 

The one nice thing about being Jessadrine Mayeur's bodyguard is that Three gets to keep his gun.

Verduro's personal art gallery is actually more of a space station—which, no wonder Five had sounded kind of impressed when she'd mentioned the guy had paid to have the whole thing built himself. It's in orbit around a planet, Myrias Secundus, which Verduro apparently also owns.

"You know, this whole murdering corporate CEO gig seems pretty cushy," Three says, when the _Marauder_ has touched down safely in one of the gallery's bays.

"Yeah, don't get any ideas," Six says flatly, and then he turns and offers Two his elbow.

"Try to stay out of trouble," Two adds, and she gives Three a longer stare than she gives Five, for absolutely no good reason.

And then Two and Six head off, arm in arm, trying to get themselves lost in a crowd of eight laughing people disembarking from a sleek little corvette—they're going in a different door, if they can find one, because the more eyes they can get moving around the gallery, the quicker they find Verduro; and the quicker they find Verduro, the more time they have for the rest of it.

Which means Three's the only one who's stuck going in with the brat.

"Well, come on, kid," he says, eyeing the rest of the bay as he comes down the _Marauder_ 's ramp. Six brought them down pretty close to the exit, which is going to be handy if they have to make a break for it—

Five clears her throat pointedly, somewhere behind him.

"Oh, what now?"

" _I_ give the orders, not you," Five says, with her chin in the air, stupid fancy curls spilling sideways over her shoulder. "And you follow _me_."

"Not going to be much help if somebody tries to shoot you in the face," Three says.

Five raises an eyebrow.

"What? I'm just saying."

"You follow me," Five repeats, tossing that ridiculous hair over her shoulder with a flourish, and then minces toward the door with the picky little steps she's apparently decided Jessadrine Mayeur uses.

"On the other hand," Three mutters under his breath, "now I can shoot you in the back. That's nice."

"You wouldn't dare," Five says sunnily, because the kid has ears like a bat; and Three rolls his eyes and follows her.

 

 

*

 

 

The gallery's orbit around Myrias Secundus has been precisely calculated: the system's star, Myrion, is always in exactly the same place in relation to it, dramatically rising around the curving edge of the planet without ever actually coming up.

Always a little out of reach. Only a disgustingly rich person would think that made for a nice view, Three thinks.

They get in through the doors without too much trouble—most of these people seem to have bodyguards trailing them, and as far as Three can tell, a lot of them are actually androids. Three keeps his face android-blank as Five advances toward the main entrance's checkpoint, and his collar's high enough to cover where a barcode might be; once Jessadrine's well-faked credentials have been checked, he hardly gets a second glance. Sloppy.

Then again, what exactly does this place have going for it? A whole lot of drunk douchebags, and _art_.

Five pauses just inside the doors, Jessadrine's attention caught by one of the first couple pieces so Five and Three can scope the place out a little, and Three can't help making a face.

"Seriously, what the fuck even is that?" he murmurs.

"'A minimalist meditation on the ephemeral nature of the _active_ , by contrast with the unseen _passive_ '," Five reads off the info card she got handed at the entrance, and then she taps the corner of the card and scrolls down a little. "Ferrous fluids suspended in a localized zero-gravity zone; the rotation is achieved through the use of low-powered blasts of directional magnetic energy every ninety seconds. Huh. Wonder how they compensate for the—"

"That is not a meditation on jack shit," Three says. "That is a floating blob of blue paint. People pay to look at this?"

"People paid to own it," Five says absently. "Almost half a million credits." She flashes the info card at him, with a little SOLD banner just scrolling into view across the corner of the description.

"... I changed my mind," Three says. "I'm not going to be a murderous corporate CEO, I'm just going to make murderous corporate CEOs pay me to make paint float. You can make paint float, right?"

"Making paint float is for peons," Five says, in Mayeur's snide tones, and then she flicks a curl over her shoulder and strides around the floating paint. "Keep up or you're fired."

"Seriously, if anybody tries to kill you, I'm going to let them," Three hisses at the back of her head, and he takes a petty satisfaction in hunching, even if she's not looking.

 

 

*

 

 

They weave around a couple more weird-ass installations—some kind of moving lightshow that gives Three vertigo if he looks at it head-on, and a huge hanging swarm of black magnetic beads or something, which is creepy as all get-out.

"It's like lightless staring eyes," he says to Five, who's looking at him with an eyebrow raised. " _Ten thousand_ of them."

"You're a terrible bodyguard," Five says. "I don't know why Maximilian even hired you."

Three blinks. "Maximilian?"

"My personal butler and head of staff, obviously," Five says, with another artful toss of her head. "I don't know how you could possibly have forgotten."

"Yes, of course," Three forces out, trying not to grit his teeth too hard. "How silly of me."

"Well, I don't keep you around for your brains," Five says, and pats him condescendingly on the elbow.

She even wipes her fingers off after. Three would be impressed by her attention to detail, if he weren't too busy rolling his eyes.

And then there's a tiny crackle in Three's ear—a crackle, and a sharp little whine, and Two's voice saying, "—there? Three, Five, are you—"

"It's the magnetic field," Five murmurs, and minces off sideways toward—a cube? Is that the art? The white cube sitting on the floor? What the fuck, seriously. Rich people.

"Yeah, we're here," Three says, once the whine has died away, while Five pretends to be gazing down thoughtfully at the stupid cube.

"We've spotted him," Two says. "We've got a visual on Verduro."

"Oh, thank fuck," Three mutters under his breath, and then clears his throat before Two can ask him to repeat that. "Just tell us where he is, and the kid'll take it from there."

 

 

*

 

 

Of course Verduro's halfway across the damn gallery, because that's just Three's luck. Standing by some weird silvery abstract sculpture, green suit; or at least that's what Two says. But Five doesn't drag it out: she's still using Mayeur's stupid walk, but with purpose, like she knows where Verduro is and is headed right for him.

Which she does, and she is. But nobody else is supposed to know that.

Three coughs. "Uh, kid—"

"Relax," Five says out of the side of her mouth, "I've got a plan," and then she's walking right up to Verduro's extremely green back and clearing her throat imperiously.

Verduro's in the middle of a conversation with somebody else, who's almost as violently purple as Verduro is green. He hears Five—Three can see it in the way he pauses, halfway through gesturing with the crystalline flute of something that he's waving around in one thick-knuckled hand. But he doesn't stop talking, and he doesn't turn around.

Five clears her throat again, more loudly, and then gestures authoritatively toward Three.

Like he knows what the fuck to do.

Well, okay, he sort of does: bluff like hell.

He clears his throat, too, and straightens up; and then he says, loudly and blandly, like he actually has the right to do it, "Ms. Mayeur would like a word."

And at that, Verduro does stop. Miraculously, Mr. Purple beyond him seems to accept this as a cue, like Three's actually played a reasonable hand; he flushes a little, like he's somehow lost ground by letting himself be interrupted, and says coolly, "Another time, then," before he turns away and walks off, managing to look almost like he'd intended the conversation to end anyway.

Verduro watches him go, and then turns. His eyes reach Three and then skim easily across him, dismissing him, and fix on Five's face instead. "I am at your service, Ms. Mayeur," he murmurs, slick tone to match his slick smile, and yeah, Three can absolutely believe this guy paid to have somebody killed. Or, like, ten people.

Maybe twenty.

Five sniffs and looks superior, like—well, like a dumb rich kid with no sense of subtlety or caution, which is exactly what she's supposed to be. "The _Act of Will #12_ —yours, isn't it?"

Act of—Three blinks. The cube has a title.

Of course it does.

"Yes," Verduro says, "a masterpiece—"

 _Yeah, of artistry— **scam** artistry,_ Three doesn't say. He also doesn't roll his eyes, which makes about the fifteenth time he's had to undertake that particular superhuman effort since they walked in here.

"How much?" Five says idly, examining her nails: cleaned and buffed the way Jessadrine Mayeur's ought to be, which had taken for-fucking-ever.

Verduro blinks. Rich people with judgment are supposed to be circumspect about these things, Three supposes; but Mayeur is intended to look like an easy mark to Verduro, more money than brains.

"Don't be coy, now," Five adds, and angles a smile up at Verduro through her eyelashes in a way that makes Three suddenly want to stand in between them.

Verduro's not looking at him—he can afford to cut his eyes sideways and let his eyebrow twitch in a way that he hopes says, _What the fuck, kid?_ as clearly as he intends it to.

And Five totally sees it, but she doesn't have an opening to do much more than swish a handful of curls disdainfully back over her shoulder. Which isn't much of an answer.

"Oh," Verduro says, "I couldn't possibly. It is a beloved favorite."

"How favorite?" Five says, abruptly sounding vaguely bored. "A one-million-credit sort of favorite?"

"Ms. Mayeur—"

"Two million," Five amends.

Verduro's mouth freezes halfway open for a split second—presumably at the thought of anybody paying two million credits for a goddamn cube—and then resumes motion, so he can say smarmily, "I can see you are a young lady of taste and refinement, and a work such as that certainly belongs in the hands of someone capable of appreciating it. Perhaps an accommodation can be reached, if you'd like to discuss the matter further?"

Greaseball.

Five smiles at him like he's not a greaseball, and takes the elbow he offers her with a little giggle.

Which leaves Three to slide into position behind them, and murmur, so low only Two and Six can hear him, "We got him."

 

 

*

 

 

And that's pretty much accurate. Up until the part where Three follows Verduro and Five back behind another slick gleaming gallery wall and into some sort of reception room, and it turns out Verduro's the one who's got them.

"Hey, whoa," Three says, and shoulders in between Five and the row of gallery security—Verduro's security—with all the guns.

"Oh," Verduro says absently, "you're not an android at all, are you? Interesting. Give up your weapons, will you?"

"Now hang on just a second—"

"This is what you call reaching an accommodation?" Five says stridently, clutching Three's arm—Mayeur for all she's worth, until they know what angle Verduro's working here.

"Oh, I think I'll be accommodating you for quite a while," Verduro says, "unless you choose to accommodate me. If you're willing to throw around that kind of money on a piece of art, Ms. Mayeur, I can only imagine what your personal safety might be worth to you."

Three glances sideways, quick, to find Five looking back. Definitely the kind of guy who'd kill somebody to advance his business. That would almost be promising, if they weren't outnumbered and trapped in his swanky little back office.

But Two and Six must be hearing some of this, and they were already on their way back here.

"Weapons," Verduro says, snapping his fingers impatiently at Three.

Three looks at him, and at the five grim-faced guys lined up behind him, and scrunches up his mouth like he's considering it. "Eh," he says. "On balance, I'm kind of thinking I'd rather keep them."

"Oh, for—" Verduro says with a sigh. "What's she paying you?"

Three blinks. "Excuse me?"

"The girl," Verduro says, waving a hand absently at Five, who's still hanging off Three's shoulder as uselessly as she can. "What's she paying you? I'll double it."

"Are you serious?"

"Fine, fine. Triple, then—I do appreciate a man who knows what he's worth." Verduro smiles, gleaming with smug awareness of his own generosity. Asshole. "Triple whatever it is you get in a year with Ms. Mayeur if you turn around right now and walk out that door, and leave her to me."

Three looks at him. It's not like it actually matters what Three says. Two and Six are going to come busting in here any moment, and Verduro and his guys won't be expecting it at all. Pushing him around on it, trying to negotiate the terms of the payout or whatever, would be a perfectly reasonable play for time, to keep him talking for an extra thirty seconds.

But it's not Mayeur whose life this pig is trying to buy. It's Five. Perfectly reasonable play for time—but somehow Three just can't get the words out.

"Fuck you," he hears himself say instead.

Verduro raises an eyebrow. "What? You want more?"

"I want you to know that _I_ know you own five or six planets," Three says, "so that when I tell you you couldn't pay me what it would take, you get that I mean it."

Verduro sighs, a sound of mild disappointment, and then gestures over his shoulder; and Three can't even be sure which of the stone-faced stuffed uniforms back there is specifically the one who shoots him.

 

 

*

 

 

Apparently it did actually matter what Three said. Wacky.

"Oh, shit, ow," he gasps, and is vaguely bewildered to find he's still standing up—the shot shoved him backward, sharp as a kick from a horse, but apparently his knees didn't buckle completely.

Five's not hanging off him anymore so much as she is holding him up. "Three! Three—"

"I am so fucking sick of getting shot for you," he rasps, and she glares.

"Then stop doing it!" she says, and before Verduro can so much as twitch that stupid hand of his again, she's shoved an arm under Three's suit jacket, yanked his gun free, and is pointing it at Verduro. "Don't move."

"She will totally shoot you," Three adds helpfully, because she totally will. "I'm pretty sure she killed me once, and she _likes_ me. Sort of. I don't remember her doing it, I admit, and it could've been—"

And oh, fuck, there it is: he chokes himself off right there, because if he leaves his mouth open he'll make some kind of horrible whiny sound, and Five will never ever let him forget it. His shoulder _was_ just sort of off out there somewhere, shot; but now the pain is really starting to seep in, the part where it's his shoulder and attached to him—the hot sick throbbing, deep in the bone, and fuck, he shouldn't have thought "sick", he really doesn't want to vomit right now—

"Three," Five's saying, "Three—eyes open, come on," and Three cracks an eye to check but she's not making any rookie mistakes, not looking away from Verduro or letting the gun waver.

"Hey, good for you, kid," Three tells her a little unsteadily, and that's when Two and Six come in—from the _back_ , ooh, nice touch.

It sounds like a whole lot of fun happens at that point, but Three doesn't actually get to see very much of it, because the kid lowers him to the floor like he's some kind of invalid.

"Hey," he says, to register his indignation.

Five's not listening, though. "Give me your jacket," she says to Verduro. "And your belt. _Now_ ," and she nudges his lapel with the mouth of the gun when he doesn't move fast enough.

"Hey, no, wait, that thing is so ugly," Three says, but for some reason he can't lift his arm high enough to shove Verduro's eye-searing green jacket away when Five presses it on him. "Ugh—"

"Stop squirming," Five tells him, and then, raising her voice, "Two?"

"Yeah, I'm coming," Two says; Three hears the meaty crack of somebody unlucky getting pistol-whipped, and then Two appears in his line of sight, with—oh, right, the injector. "Don't worry," she murmurs to Verduro, whose eyes have gotten a little wild, the whites of them showing all around. "You're going to be just fine," and then she jams her hand up against his neck, and there he goes.

"Man, I really wanted to do that part," Three mutters, letting his head drop back. Why is he so tired?

"Come on, sit forward a little," Five says, because when the kid gets bossy the kid gets _bossy_ ; and then she tightens the belt around his shoulder, under the arm—when did she wrap a belt around his shoulder?—and oh, fuck, fucking _ow_.

"Fucking ow," Three gasps.

But the pain clears his head a little. He manages to sit halfway up and take a look around—Verduro's security guys are indeed down, caught by surprise, and Verduro himself is sacked out on the floor at Two's feet, drugged silly.

"He's definitely a criminal," Three informs Two.

She doesn't look surprised to hear this.

"Is he going to be okay?"

"I think so," Five says, eyeing Three critically. "There's no exit wound, but I think it's just lodged in his shoulder. Didn't hit his lung or anything. He should be fine once we get him to the infirmary."

"Not a problem," Six says, and bends down to loop Three's good arm over his shoulder.

Two hauls Verduro off the floor and over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes—from the look on her face, Three thinks she'd probably just be dragging him if that wouldn't make a lot more noise. "This hallway around the back goes to an access corridor that leads back around to the docking bays," she says. "Five minutes and we'll be back on the _Marauder_."

"Sounds good," Three says, and does his best not to pass out when Six pulls him up.

 

 

*

 

 

It feels like a lot more than five minutes—a lot more and a lot less at the same time, actually, which is weird. Three loses some time in the corridor, yeah, but it still feels like it goes on _forever_ , the flat gleaming walls still there every time he cracks an eye to check; and then it's like he blinks and Six is buckling him into a seat on the shuttle.

"Hey, hey," Three says, smacking at Six's hands, "don't—"

"I'll do it," Five says, and—well, it wouldn't be sporting to smack the kid, would it? She's small. And needs her hands for stuff.

She finishes up with the restraints, pressing one carefully down over Three's injured shoulder—and he doesn't scream, okay, he just makes a little noise through his teeth. It's fine.

"You'll be okay," Five tells him, totally unnecessarily, and then grabs his hand before he can get it out of range.

"Whoa, hey," Three says, "I do _not_ need you to hold my hand, kid."

"Well, I want to hold your hand," Five says firmly. "It makes me feel better."

She doesn't even _do_ anything, but suddenly her eyes are bigger—rounder, more liquid. Fuck.

She's got him dead to rights.

"Fine," Three grumbles, and then he lets his head roll back against the shuttle seat and maybe a little bit passes out.

 

 

*

 

 

He doesn't manage to stay passed out, of course, because his luck's never been that good. At least he misses Six heaving him back out of the _Marauder_ —which probably hurt. But he can only tell that because there's a little extra edge to the fiery agony raging where his arm used to be. Could be worse.

"Back with us, huh," Six says, and then Three has to blink and squint because there are approximately ten million lights on in the infirmary.

"Come on, over here," Five says, and together she and Six start lugging him over to one of the beds.

One of the ones that's not already taken up with Verduro.

"And it'll make an imprint of him, just like it did for us?" Two is saying, somewhere over Six's shoulder.

"Yes," says the android, bright and placid. "The scan will complete in approximately twenty-three minutes. Much like your own memories, Verduro's will not be accessible in any conventional format; if he does remember ordering the death of either Derrick Moss or Catherine Moss, we will not be able to tell without—"

"Right, you said," Two says. "We'll figure something out. And twenty-three minutes shouldn't be long enough to cause a problem, when everybody saw him head back there with Five."

"Twenty-two minutes, now," the android amends.

"What," Three mutters, "no seconds?" and then he can't help a grimace as Six tries to lower him down without hurting him and doesn't quite pull it off.

When he gets his eyes open all the way again, the android's moved up next to Six. "I determined that including that data would not alter the conclusion Two would draw from the whole," she says, "and thus I—chose not to include it."

"Cutting corners," Three says, and tsks.

The android looks him up and down, blinks, and then says, "I think it would be best if you were not conscious while I perform the necessary medical procedure to remove that bullet from your shoulder."

"Oh, agreed," Three tells her, and spreads his good hand, giving her his best Marcus Boone smile. "By all means: drug me good."

"Stop doing that," Five says, "you look deranged," and then, ugh, grabs his hand again. "The android'll take the bullet out, and you'll be fine, and I'll be here when you wake up."

"Oh, lucky me," Three says, rolling his eyes.

But he doesn't quite manage to pull his hand away before the android jabs him in the neck and he's under.

 

 

*

 

 

(The android will take the bullet out, and Three will be fine; and Five will be there when Three wakes up.

And, when Three finally lurches back to his quarters afterward to rest, he will find a very well-cleaned, very ugly green suit jacket draped neatly across his pillow.

And when he does, he'll smile. Even if nobody sees it.)

 

 


End file.
